Rate
:
% of Persons in Households with over 1.5 person per room

Rates are used to define comparative statistics that can be
mapped and graphed.
For example, our occupational information includes counts
of the number of workers in employment and out of employment,
as well as the total number of workers.
We then define a measure called the 'Unemployment Rate',
which uses the number out of work rather than the number
in work, and expresses it as a percentage of the total,
rather than a rate per thousand.
The descriptive text in the system is defined mainly
for rates.

These figures record the percentage of people living in households with more than
one and a half people per room (not counting bathrooms and corridors).
Note that this measure cannot be calculated for Scotland in 1931 or 1951.

The figures for 1931 are for 'families', not households, and the total number
of families excludes those with more than five rooms.
The figures seem to show a very clear geographical pattern, with the worst
conditions concentrated into both urban and rural parts of the north-east of England.
However, this pattern may be a result of the way the census measured crowding,
by counting numbers of rooms rather than floorspace.
To some extent housing in the north-east resembled that in Scotland, with fewer
but larger rooms, while in the north-west of England people lived in terraced
houses with lots of small rooms.
There was also serious over-crowding in inner London: the twenty worst districts
include Tower Hamlets, Islington and Southwark.

In 1931, three districts had over half their households living at over one person
per room, but by 1951 only one had over a third.
The worst districts were still concentrated in the north-east, but slum clearance
schemes in some urban areas meant that the rural west midlands now appear as a problem area.
In the 1950s and 1960s very active slum clearance programmes, planned construction
of 'overspill' estates and new towns, and home-owning middle class families being able
to afford better homes all led to great improvements: by 1971, only 6% of households
in England and Wales had less than one room per person, compared to 21% in 1931 and 16% in 1951.
The concentration of bad conditions in the north-east and London remained, although
the north-east then saw remarkable improvement in its relative position during the 1970s.

Rate
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% of Persons in Households with over 1.5 person per room
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